


They Can't Keep Meeting Like This

by Brorifles (Kyloisadisneyprincess)



Series: Crossed Stars [7]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Bittersweet, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-11 00:54:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7868905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyloisadisneyprincess/pseuds/Brorifles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Quick embraces and murmured endearments have never been enough for Zeb and Kallus. But that's all they can spare. Is it worth the risk?</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Can't Keep Meeting Like This

Imperial Inteligence received an anonymous tip that there were rebels lingering in Lothal’s main market square. It’s high noon and the sun glares down from overhead as Agent Kallus orders his storm troopers to fan out and search. He’s never been jealous of their gleaming white armor but now he wonders if the plasteel plates at least deflect some of the heat, even if they are rubbish at stopping blaster bolts.

There are a variety of people moving about. After the empire took over, lothal had become sort of a catch all planet, acting as a in between place for outer rim travelers. There are a plenty of shop keepers to take advantage of that. Here and there a child or two dart in between the stalls and their families, if they have them. They seem uncaring, or even unaware, that the temperature does not make an easy task of such avid play.

You’d think he would appreciate the heat after almost freezing to death. But no, Kallus can almost feel the freckles blooming on his face. All while the uniform, that does well to keep him warm on a star destroyer in the depths of space or in his climate regulated office, is suddenly too warm. It's dark color soaks in the sunlight with relish, like a napping loth-cat.

A movement flashes in an alleyway to his right. Might as well check it out, it would be cooler in the shade of the buildings any way. But as soon as he starts to move towards that relief an explosion goes off in the distance. It’s in an abandoned stretch of tenements adjacent to the market. There’s not likely any casualties or even any reason to bomb that section of the city.

It has scared the shoppers. Each is in a frenzy to find their companions. Mothers shout the names of their children and sellers hastily try to pack up their goods. Moments ago this might have been considered a happy place, at least fairly happy for the outer rim of this galaxy. A pair of rodian lovers pass him, arm in arm, and he wonders briefly what it would be like to hold hands with Zeb openly, to do something even as mundane as shopping together.

  
It’s a slice of domesticity they will probably never have, not unless the galaxy suddenly becomes a free and loving republic again. But the odds of that are like trying to shoot the ears off a gundark. Kallus doesn’t have time to dwell on it now. He turns in the direction of the explosion.

Time to go to work.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“It wasn’t supposed to go like that!!!” Zeb yells as he runs after Sabine.

“When does it ever go like it’s supposed too?!?” she calls back.

This was just meant to be a brief meeting to exchange information with a contact. He had never shown. It had been a mistake to enter the building to look for him. The whole thing had been an elaborate trap, even if not a very successful one.

They are almost back to the Ghost when Sabine activates her jet pack.

‘Why is she…’ he thinks before running right into Agent Kallus. The rebel nearly knocks him over. They grapple a bit before Zeb is able to pin him. He loves that Kallus is strong. Pausing and flicking his ears in the direction of the main street to listen, He learns that the troopers are not long behind them. But they will be long enough.

Kallus protests “we are too out in the open” but he doesn't resist when Zeb strokes the underside of his jaw lining them up for a kiss. It’s brief, and Zeb finds himself looking longingly at Kallus’s neck when they pull away. The human is rosy from the heat and from exertion. And are those freckles?

He won’t get the chance for a closer look. The Storm troopers are almost on top of them. He takes his lover by the shoulders and throws him out of his arms. It feels like ripping off a bandage. Each meeting both tears open and gives fresh air to a wound that he doesn’t know how to tend.

  
Zeb runs.

Back on the Ghost in the relative safety of hyperspace he wonders why Kallus didn’t warn them about the trap.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A trap within a trap.

Just when the rebels think they have dogged a blaster bolt… There! There it was. One of the probes he had released to document the explosion had caught it: all the evidence Thrawn needed to prove his theory correct.

Agent Kallus and the rebel lasat enter an alley fighting. Strange, how their bow-rifles are still on their backs. The Lasat has the upper hand and pins the agent to a wall. But there is no blow struck and very little struggle from Kallus. Instead the agent speaks, what he says is unimportant, lost to the poor transmission.

It’s what they do. Funny that something as chaste as a quick kiss can become terribly illicit in the right context. The agent’s head is tilted at a severe angle, opening up his neck to attack from the enemy. It shouldn’t matter, but Thrawn can tell that the vulnerable, exposed skin it is what prompts the Lasat to grab his treacherous lover by the shoulders and swing him into the stormtroopers rounding the corner.

They are bowled down like a set of shiny white pins.

Strike.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, Join me on tumblr and together we can rule the galaxy as writer and reader!  
> I'm @brorifles


End file.
